What's China Up To?

Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

Josh Szeps

Society & Culture, Education, Comedy Interviews, Comedy, Self-improvement

4.5 • 905 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 98 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Military purges. DeepSeek AI. Social credit scores. Taiwan. Why has the Chinese leader purged five of the seven members of the military's top decision-making body (one of the remaining two members being himself)? Next month, the Chinese Communist Party will enact its fifteenth Five-Year Plan. It's a biggie, because 2027 is the centenary of the People's Liberation Army - a date when China has declared it will be ready for major military combat. Bill Bishop is the most-read China analyst in the world. A former media guy who wrote the New York Times Dealbook's China Insider column, he became an entrepreneur and was the media's go-to China analyst during Covid. He launched one of the first Substacks ever, a fascinating blog about China called Sinocism, which now has hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Bill and Josh step back to ask: Will China own the 21st century? Will it eat our lunch, or slowly deflate? Happy lunar new year, humans.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Gide, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Here's a dangerous question for you. What exactly is China up to? There have been military purges. DeepSeek AI has released its latest model.
0:23.7	Is it true that China has social credit scores?
0:25.4	What are they planning on Taiwan?
0:32.1	It is the Lunar New Year, the largest migration of human beings on the planet where nearly 10 million people in China travel to celebrate an extended Lunar New Year this year. And I thought it was time to
0:39.4	sit down with the world's leading expert on China. He's certainly the most read China analyst in the
0:44.7	world. Bill Bishop lived in China initially in the late 1980s. He was there for Tiananmen Square.
0:50.9	He was a junior reporter, I guess, at CBS News while that was all taking place.
0:56.8	And he went back to live in China for 10 years at a time when China was just introducing its great
1:01.8	firewall and starting to block itself off from the internet and becoming more paranoid,
1:06.9	I suppose, more controlling of information. Now, next month, the Chinese Communist Party will enact its 15th five-year plan, and it's big this time, because next year, 27, is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.
1:24.3	And that is a moment in time in which many people in Chinese authority have said the Chinese
1:29.9	military should be ready to undertake major military combat. Will it? What does that even mean?
1:37.1	And what should we in the West be doing to understand better the threat and the opportunity
1:41.0	that China poses? Bill Bishop's substack is one of the biggest publications on Substack.
1:46.9	That's why I say he's probably the most read China analyst in the world.
1:49.3	Hundreds of thousands of people receive his newsletter.
1:52.2	I was delighted and honored, and I hope you enjoy as much as I did.
1:55.4	The one, the only, Bill Bishop.
2:08.4	We were going to chat last year, I was hoping, while I was on my
2:12.6	Zets Live world tour, which was great fun.
2:19.8	It's good to have a like a tax deductible excuse to travel around the world and talk to interesting people.
2:25.4	How are you, Bill? And where is your head at in this crazy? There's a lot of news coming out of America at the moment, and I always like to check in with people about how they're going.
	...

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